imomus | The 3D man

The 3D man

"You've really succeeded," I tell Florian Perret. "I always knew you would." You can see the talent in the sleeves he did for my albums Folktronic and Oskar Tennis Champion, or the visuals he made for my art projects for Zach Feuer Gallery and MoCA (I'm an artist not only without prices, but without visuals too!). The one thing I got wrong about Florian is that, back when I met him in New York in 2000, I thought he'd end up driving a BMW. That's what I told Kazumi, the girl he ended up marrying. In fact, he hates cars. These days, in Japan's most beautiful town, he's pushing his young son Karel around in a pram or riding a stunt bike past foxgloves and bamboo.

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday with Florian in Kamakura, Japan's one-time capital, a highly haunted and magical resort on the Pacific. He's living there in one house and renting another for his 3D production company, Alfabet. For the next couple of years he'll be working on the animation of a feature-length film for a major Japanese animation studio. His workspace is idyllic; a Swedish-style pine lodge in the low, densely-wooded hills just to the north of the town. It's an incredibly tranquil place, surrounded by the whooping calls of unseen exotic birds. The ground floor is all shiny new Macs, sketches of characters, CG software manuals. Upstairs there's a vast and noisy server shuttling files back and forth between Kamakura and Tokyo, and the guest bedroom where Hisae and I stayed. The 3D man is doing what he wants, and doing it brilliantly. He's rounded, making, and made.

Hisae and I rented Yamaha PAS City electric bikes on Wednesday and cycled out along the coast (the sun scorched me lobster red) to Enoshima, then surged over the wooded hills of Kamakura, seeing all the usual temples, caves, towers, giant Buddhas and so on. The PAS City is an amazing invention, a NiCad-charged beast that continuously monitors your pedaling and supplies spurts of power to the back wheel when you flick a switch at handlebar level. You can choose "feeble" or "zoom" (they aren't called that, of course). It's not like a motorbike at all -- the power complements your own pedaling intelligently. If you don't pedal, it doesn't help. The result is a bit like having bionic legs, or walking on the moon.

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Kamakura's one of the cities I plan to see after the Worldcon. Sounds lovely over there.

Are you going to be in Japan during late August/early September?

I won't be in Japan then, no. It's a lovely season, though. Red maple!

do you only hang out with men who have married a japanese woman?

Every time I post one of these "me and my friends" items, this question comes. And every time the category of people I'm accused of "only hanging out with" changes!

Do you only hang out with the people momus hangs out with? How elitist of you! You should broaden your horizons

you beat me to this question.

団子が好きじゃない

Automatically translated text:

The favorite there is no dumpling.

The automatic text translator has been lieing to you for quite some time.

団子はステキなんだ

(cycle i mean)
:P

I did cycle in London when I lived there! All my London bikes were stolen -- except for the one I gave to my brother when I moved to New York.

What are those yellow things? Things dipped in honey and eaten like a kind of lollipop? Are the things Lychee?

They're called dango and they taste like crap. Imagine a mouth full of sweetened, semi-set wallpaper paste.

Mochi is shit too for pretty much the same reason.

Oh, I see, but what food is your favourite then? A fruit like the durian perhaps?

Favourite Japanese food?

Eel in teriyaki sauce is great. Takoyaki is another favourite of mine. White peaches are pretty popular in Japan and they're delicious.

Infact, I like most Japanese food, I just hate traditional Japanese sweets -- they're all crushed rice and bean paste... You look at them, and they're very attractive, hundreds of different designs and colours... then you put them in your mouth and they turn back to wallpaper paste...

Kabayaki sauce (for eel) and teriyaki sauce is little bit different... It is close, though.

I hate to shit on your "I'm more of a Japanophile than you are" parade but kabayaki isnt a sauce, its a generic term for seafood dipped in sweet soy sauce otherwise known as teriyaki sauce.

tl:dr -- Seafood + teriyaki sauce = kabayaki

How about ブリの照焼き?

Yellowtail coated in teriyaki sauce? It would have to be completely deboned and filleted to be classed as kabayaki.

I don't agree to call buri teri as buri kaba (because it is a fillet, not hiraki, dressed with teriyaki sauce on the pan, not dipped into the sauce and cook by direct firing) but " deboned fish teriyaki = kabayaki" sounds better than last one. Most of us - I forgot to say I am a Japanese - buy cooked eel with kabayaki sauce (蒲焼きのタレ in a small bottle or so) and put the sauce on. By contraries BOTTLED teriyaki sauce is not common. Japanese Wikipedia says "teriyaki"が辞書に載るほど知名度がある。(略）しかし日本人の感覚からすると甘過ぎたり余分な香辛料が入っていたりすることが多く、「照り焼き」と"teriyaki"は違うものであると感じる人もいるようである。" I guess it explains why we have different opinions... :)

As far as I know, fish that's been filleted and deboned, then coated in teriyaki sauce is kabayaki. I've never heard of kabayaki sauce being different to teriyaki sauce. The sauce used in kabayaki is 1/2 cup of soy, 1/2 cup of mirin and 1/4 cup of sugar. That's exactly the same as teriyaki sauce.

It's like in English -- Juice concerntrate and Cordial are exactly the same, but they're used differently to describe types of juice syrups. You would never say "orange cordial", but you would say "lime cordial" even through a cordial the same as a juice syrup concerntrate.

When I think of fishes cooked as kabayaki, I imagine reedy ones with SMALL BONES they have to use tweezers to debone.(That is one of the reasons why eel s are expensive). Yes the ingredients of the sauce are about the same - But teriyaki is mostly cooked in the frying pan and kabayaki is not. It is interesting for me you don't like the mitarashi dango in the picture btw. The recipe of mitarashi sauce is about the same to teriyaki (soy sauce, mirin, sugar and starch)...Sweet and salty... Don't you like the dumpling itself?

I just hate mochi. the texture, the taste, its horrible... I wish those rabbits on the moon had never made the stuff.

I see. ;)

You felt threatened someone else might actually know more about Japan than you and it turns out to be a Japanese person. Haha you dumb gaijin oaf! In your own mind you're a king but guys like you never really make it that far in Japan. 早く帰れ

gh

Have you ever tried Salmiakki (http://www.masterhouse.jp/index/salmiakki.jpg)? A Scandinavian and Dutch speciality that is eaten as a candy... And that tastes super salt. I think Marmite is not even close to it.

i think teriyaki doesn't even classify as a sauce as such , it is a method or a goal rather. use shoyu, mirin, sugar and cook it until it turns glossy、shiny (照る）. a glazing, that's what it is. something little understood by most japanese food-eaters outside japan and either not known or ignored by their caterers who pile some bastard sauce with the spoon often adding odd stuff like garlic etc to it; and restaurants in japan basically just don't serve terriyaki.

the eel is a different story altogether.

marinade, whatever. ;o)

Sounds like you are having a blast; will you be putting some photographs of your visit on flikr over the next few days?
Regards - Thomas S.

Yes.

Like the Spookhouses image, those domiciles do look like architectural spectres.
You're using those specs as a filter again, rather like the results, a little like the wonderfully serendipitous effects one could get with the combination of some of those old seventies film emulsions and crappy, overdue high street processing.
Film photography lost a certain poetry-of-chance as colour rendition became more 'real'.
Thomas S.

http://www.kontraband.com/show/show.asp?ID=4087

I love the way Hisae stands. Does she do any Tai-Chi?
Oh and you stand proud too. Air those toes!

She doesn't do Tai-Chi. I was doing some the other day to pass time on a station platform, but it was Mock Tai-Chi.

Yeah, we like get it... but what we really want to know is: what are your thoughts on Swedish outfit, Army Of Lovers? Shalom b'Israel!

I was a huge fan of Army of Lovers in the early 90s. I used to play them when I was a DJ at Fortress Europe, Jake Tassell's club in Mayfair.

Long time no see, Charles!

charleshatcher is back!

bonjour. merci pour votre visite a kamak.
ce qui me generais un peu, c'est l'effet de l'utilisation du verbe end up.ca cree un parallelisme entre la voiture et la personne. et le sentiment dont le mariage egale a une fin si je ne me trompe.
on sera toujours heureux de vous voir faire la security de notre bureau pendant la nuit, que de voir faire du camping.

Salut Kazu!

Oui, en effet c'est une tendance impose par mon modele narrative -- genre "J'ai toujours su qu'il va reussir, et tiens, regarder, j'ai eu raison en fin du compte! Ils ont une belle marrriage, bon carriere, beau fils, deux maisons...".

Mais bien sur il n'y a jamais un "fin du compte" en realité, il y a un processus qui se plie et deplie en permanence. Le travail, les enfants, ca change aussi, et c'est jamais fini. J'ai tendance a reserver cette verite Bouddique et peripatetique pour moi meme, mais de regarder les gens beaucoup plus jeune comme "arrivé" quelque part. C'est probablement un mauvais habitude, et peut etre un espece de revanche pour mon viellesse! Les jeunes sont arrivé, et je suis vieux mais cependant toujours en voyage! Quelle vanité!

Awesome, you have discovered the wonders of electric bikes! ^_^ I (http://www.ebikeblog.org) rode one from Melbourne to Sydney (http://www.suitabletransport.com) last month to raise awareness, they're still mostly unheard of here in Australia but I assume, all over the place in Japan? I'd be a bit worried if they were still using NiCads though, there are much better batteries that don't have memory charge loss, such as NiMHs, and the best currently widely available, Lithium Polymers. But then I can't read Japanese to check the specs :P

You're right, it's a lithium ion battery, not a NiCad.

I don't know how widespread the bikes are in Japan, but in the bike rental shop by Kamakura station that's the only kind they had, which says something. I suppose electric bikes are like Starbucks coffee -- they give you the chance to, ahem, charge more.

Kamakura looks lovely.

I've always liked the idea and the sound of the place, and the resonance of its name, but have never been. Maybe next time I'm in Japan...

my godfather invented one of those bikes years ago!

dig your old-skool lolita look, btw.

Hi Momus!

I turned around and said hello in the Yamanote Line tonight. You told me that there will be a show in Shibuya. But where is that going to be? I've serached thru Click Opera and other sections in imomus, but counldn't find the right info...

It would be great if you noticed this message and replied or wrote it on Click Opera!

Thanks!

beatnik67

Wow, that was quick! Hello again!

The show is at Apple Store Shibuya (opposite Parco) at 8pm on June 6th. It's free.

Oh, that'll be on June 6...

I picked up a Poison Boyfriend CD near my college in Boston (back in 88!) and have been a fan of yours since!

I'll be there!

beatnik67

Whats the best month/season to goto japan?

Watford Glaziers (http://watford.able-glaze.co.uk)

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The 3D man

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its a good thing you didnt do this in london

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1000 words

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yay

kazu

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Your Show Detail June 2

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